Since the beginning of time, there has existed a need for the treatment of water containing waste materials and byproducts. As civilization has advanced, this need has become more acute. To respond to these needs, waste water is diverted to large scale water treatment plants through expensive and often obtrusive systems of sewers and open waterways. Untreated water often ends up in public waterways which can have adverse health and ecological consequences. These problems are compounded by Urban Water Runoff.
Urban Water Runoff results from domestic, industrial and commercial area surface water flows. The flow of Urban Water Runoff, however, is not consistent and can be unpredictable. Sources of water include precipitation, wash-down, irrigation, fire fighting, broken water lines, natural disasters, and the widespread every day events which can not be named in an all encompassing list, but include things such as watering a lawn and washing a car. Urban Water Runoff is the water that everyone uses or sees that is not traditional sewage and is typically not treated before it is discharged into the environment.
In urban areas, the surface can be substantially impermeable by water due to things such as paving, natural conditions (e.g. soils containing a high concentration of clay or other natural materials which inhibit ground percolation) and circumstances where percolation through the ground is inadequate to purify the water.
Urban areas have substantially developed areas wherein materials that form pollutants are used, such as grease and oils from machinery (including automobiles) and pesticides and fertilizers are used. Contaminant sources can include golf courses, city streets and parking lots. Due to these factors, Urban Water Runoff often contains contamination harmful to the environment, making it necessary to treat the water prior to its discharge. The need for Urban Water Runoff treatment is particularly appropriate in areas where water may initially contain a single contaminant or a low level of a variety of contaminants and the, as a result of its flow across contaminated surfaces, may actually become additionally contaminated. This effect is referred to herein as plume expansion.
Typically, contaminant loading of Urban Water Runoff includes elevated levels of hydrocarbons, silts, trash, fertilizers, bacteria, pesticides, human and animal waste, pesticides, bacterial and viral pathogens. In addition, Urban Water Runoff can include unusually high total and fecal coliform. Waste contained in this form of untreated discharge has an enormous environmental impact on inland waterways and near shore ocean discharge systems due to the bacterial content of the discharge material.
Overall water flow levels, and the need for additional waste water treatment, continually increases. In an urban area, most of the runoff is, by design, collected through a system of gutters and storm drains. This infrastructure can be overwhelmed by unpredictable Urban Water Runoff flow caused by storms or other circumstances. Often times tributaries to large bodies of water have historically been used as a flow path, but restrictions on the ability to do so are arising out of a desire and need to avoid the introduction of contaminants into these bodies.
Thus, the only alternatives are to either divert the Urban Water Runoff through channels, sewers and the like where it combines with ordinary sewage or find a way to treat the Urban Water Runoff before it reaches these waterways to avoid the contamination of these waterways by the contaminated Urban Water Runoff. If Urban Water Runoff can be treated before it reaches the tributary bodies, it can reduce the spread of contaminants from the Urban Water Runoff and allow the continued use of the public waterways to avoid the overwhelming of traditional water treatment facilities. The traditional approach to water treatment of building large and unsightly treatment facilities, and the infrastructure of sewers and the like to support this solution, is expensive and inefficient. Thus, the present invention enables the efficient treatment of Urban Water Runoff while protecting the both the physical and aesthetic environments in the process.